“We mustn’t disturb the delicate genius!”

A cutting comeback to make of those people you must deal with because they have a specialty (medicine, law, etc.), and they go and do something that reminds you they’re not that special.

A pain in George’s arm led him to seek the medical attention of Elaine’s physical therapist friend, Wendy. When he missed an appointment without cancelling within 24 hours, Wendy charged him. Then when George showed up for another appointment and she wasn’t in—the whole thing had become a pain in George’s butt. And this was how he mitigated that pain.

Their degrees hang on their walls like windows out into the rarefied air of some higher-intelligence climate. But you see through them: yes, you’re standing in their ivory tower, but these people have two feet like the rest of us—feet they trip over now and then. Cases in point: you’ve had to move your appointment, pay more money, suffer phone calls to reconcile their errors…. The insufferable list goes on; they remain high and mighty. And now, thanks to George, you’ve a line to bring them down to earth.

Telling them this would fall on deaf ears, of course—dizzy as they are from all the pressure exerted on their heads at that egotistical altitude. So you lob your comment like a roll of toilet paper at the people who serve these professionals—the people of the front offices, on the phone lines, etc. You, for example, move another appointment (“Will that work for the delicate genius?”) and they won’t mind your missive—because they are as down to earth as you are, and so will get where you’re coming from: you’re just tee-peeing the ivory tower (and you’re not sparing a square).